Regular Meeting
UNI UNIVERSITY FACULTY SENATE MEETING
01/14/13 (3:30 p.m. – 4:58 p.m.)
Mtg. #1726
SUMMARY MINUTES
Summary of main points
1. Courtesy Announcements
Faculty Senate Chair Peters called the meeting to order at 3:30 p.m. with a
quorum present.
Press present included only Blake Findley from the Northern Iowan today.
Provost Gibson was attended another meeting today.
Faculty Chair Funderburk offered positive and encouraging comments on
the work of the Presidential Search Committee over Break and encouraged
all faculty and staff to be active in the final determination of a new
president for UNI. The complete text of his comments is found in the full
transcript following this Summary.
Chair Peters noted that the Faculty Senate January 28th regular meeting
may be moved to February 4th due to a possible conflict with a presidential
candidate open forum. He will let everyone know when the open fora are
all scheduled. Peters also thanked all those who were able to attend the
Retreat last Thursday to get work done on this semester’s Faculty Senate
issues.
2. Summary Minutes/Full Transcript
No minutes were up for approval.
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3. Docketed from the Calendar
1171 1067 Consultative session with University Relations (Jan. 14,
immediately following 1169/1065) (Terlip/Bruess)
1172 1068 Curriculum Changes—Women’s & Gender Studies Program
(regular order) (Kirmani/Cooley)
4. Consideration of Docketed Items
1163 1059 Report from Ad hoc Committee on Policy Process, regular
order (DeBerg/Neuhaus)
**This item will be considered at the next meeting.
1169 1065 Resolution to Exempt Faculty Work from the University
Relations Style Manual Requirements, regular order
(Terlip/Swan)
**Motion to bring to the floor for discussion (DeBerg/Strauss). Passed.
**Motion to call the question. (DeBerg) Passed.
**Vote on resolution. Passed.
1171 1067 Consultative session with University Relations (Jan. 14,
immediately following 1169/1065) (Terlip/Bruess)
**Discussion completed.
5. Adjournment: Time: 4:58 p.m.
**Motion to adjourn (Edginton/Hakes). Passed.
Next meeting: 02/11/13
Oak Room, Maucker Union;
3:30 p.m.
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Regular Meeting
FULL TRANSCRIPT OF THE
UNI UNIVERSITY FACULTY SENATE MEETING
January 14, 2013
Mtg. 1726
PRESENT: Melinda Boyd, Karen Breitbach, Gregory Bruess, Jennifer
Cooley, Betty DeBerg, Forrest Dolgener, Philip East, Chris Edginton, Jeffrey
Funderburk, David Hakes, Becky Hawbaker (alternate for Melissa Heston) ,
Tim Kidd, Syed Kirmani, Michael Licari, Kim MacLin, Chris Neuhaus, Scott
Peters, Jerry Smith, Mitchell Strauss, Jesse Swan, Laura Terlip, Michael
Walter, KaLeigh White
Absent: Deborah Gallagher, Gloria Gibson, Melissa Heston, Marilyn Shaw,
Gary Shontz
CALL TO ORDER
Chair Peters: Ok, it is 3:30, and although we have a somewhat low turnout,
we do have a quorum, so I’ll call this to order. [Several more Senators did
arrive over the following 10 minutes.]
COURTESY ANNOUNCEMENTS
CALL FOR PRESS IDENTIFICATION
Peters: Let’s see. I see Blake [Findley] from the Northern Iowan here, and I
don’t see any other press in the room. Correct? Ok.
COMMENTS FROM PROVOST GLORIA GIBSON
Peters: Provost Gibson is going to be late today. She’s in a meeting until
about 4:00 o’clock, but I think she plans to join us after that. [She did not
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arrive later, however.] Associate Provost Licari, you had a quick
announcement for us, I think?
Licari: I do have one quick announcement. The Leepfrog Curriculum
System went up and fully functional last week, so that’s available now. The
work flow is established, so all of the edits and things like that that faculty
have been working on throughout the Fall will now—you can log in and
send those changes along the way. So, if you’ve got questions about the
system itself in terms of making sure that it’s functioning in the way that
you expect it to, contact Diane Wallace in the Registrar’s Office or Coleen
Wagner or me. The only little sensitive item about it is it seems to work
best if you use the Firefox browser as opposed to some of the others. It
works in the others, but it--it works best in Firefox.
Peters: Any questions for now? Ok.
COMMENTS FROM FACULTY CHAIR JEFFREY FUNDERBURK
Peters: Chair Funderburk.
Funderburk: The Presidential Search Committee worked throughout the
holiday break. Working with this committee has been a tremendous
experience. It is a large committee made up of representatives from the
varied constituency groups that make up the UNI community. The
commitment to UNI and the excitement about the mission of this
institution is palpable from every member of the group. Based on the
experiences of working with this group, it is clear that at UNI we are blessed
with tremendous and unwavering support from every part of our
community and state.
Last weekend, the committee conducted airport interviews and selected a
pool of candidates to invite to campus. Beginning next week, we will have
a series of visits from the finalists for the position of UNI’s tenth president.
This change in leadership will occur at a critical time in the history of this
institution. While the recent decade has presented a seemingly unrelenting
series of challenges, we are currently poised with a great number of
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opportunities before us. Because of the series of events beginning with the
financial crisis of 2008, the complicated financial situation faced by UNI has
come to be recognized. As a result, the Iowa Board of Regents, a significant
portion of the legislature, and the Governor all recognize UNI’s unique and
important role within the State, and understand that UNI needs better
financial support in order to sustain its consistent record of serving the
State of Iowa.
Given this “alignment of stars,” UNI has a tremendous opportunity. With
the right leadership, we can solidify our finances and set forth on a path
that will raise the institution to new heights.
In order to do this, we also have to find ways to heal the wounds of recent
past and to restore the trust and cooperation within the institution that has
long been a hallmark of UNI.
Selecting the right leader for UNI will be critical in allowing us to leverage
the unique opportunities we have while quickly restoring trust within the
UNI community in order that we may build a stronger and more effective
institution to better serve our students and the State of Iowa.
The search process is not a one-sided effort to select who we want. Rather,
it is also up to all of us to show candidates the unique strengths and
charisma that make UNI the special place that we know it to be.
Our finalists are each very successful in their own right and have excellent
positions with other institutions. They will be assessing the challenges and
opportunities presented here. From their perspective, they will be looking
at UNI to see if the community is ready to move forward following our
recent history. They will be interested to gauge the willingness of the
faculty, staff, and student body to engage.
To that end, I ask that everyone make a special effort to attend the public
presentations by the candidates.
Strong attendance at these forums will demonstrate the desire on the part
of all segments of the UNI Community to come together. Such a
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demonstration of the engaged vitality of our community can go a long way
toward helping the prospective next president recognize that UNI is a
tremendous opportunity for them and their families.
You will receive notification of the schedules very soon, probably in the
next 24 hours I suspect. Candidates will be announced a few days before
they are to arrive on campus. There will be an opportunity to offer
feedback after each candidate has presented to the community.
While we are all busy at this time of the semester, please try to find the
time to take part in this important process that will significantly impact
every area of our institution over the coming years.
If there are questions, I’m sure that I or Scott [Peters] will answer what we
can.
DeBerg: I have a question
Peters: Yeah, Senator DeBerg.
DeBerg: It’s not so much about the Presidential Search process; it’s about
your introduction in which you say that it seems clear that the Governor,
the Legislature, and whatnot are on board about solidifying UNI’s financial
situation? What evidence do you base that statement on?
Funderburk: We’ve had a lot of very frank and significant discussions in the
Committee, and there’s been a lot of discussions that lead one to believe
that we’re probably better postured now than we have been for a very long
time.
DeBerg: Within the Presidential Search Committee, those discussions are
happening?
Funderburk: All of those groups are essentially represented there, so we
have
DeBerg: How is the Governor represented there?
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Funderburk: The Governor is represented in most everything here.
DeBerg: Ok.
Funderburk: The Governor has actually said on plenty of occasions that
he’s a very strong advocate for this, particularly since we are serving more
of the citizens of Iowa than anybody else.
DeBerg: I’m not doubting you. I just would like to know your source.
Peters: I think in particular to the extra $4 million each year that we got
the first installment of last year, and then—and then the—the Board’s
asking for it again, and—and, yes, my take on Board politics is they
wouldn’t be asking for it if they didn’t think the Governor was going to
follow through with it. I think the Governor—I think the Governor has
signed on to that $4-million-each-year-for-3-years plan. I mean, I guess—
you know, it’s not like—it’s not like I’ve heard that out of his mouth or
anything, but that’s just kind of my sense of the way that it—that it works.
And so that—that recognition I think is particularly helpful to us.
DeBerg: Thank you.
Peters: Are there other questions on the Presidential search? It’s like Jeff
[Faculty Chair Funderburk] said, sometime in the next couple of days,
maybe tomorrow, the schedule will come out and then each candidate’s
name will be known publically for the same amount of time prior to the
time they arrive on campus. Does that make sense? So, if—if the first
candidate is announced on Wednesday for an interview that starts, say,
Monday evening—next Monday evening with dinner with the Search
Committee, then if the next candidate after that would arrive on
Wednesday, then that person’s name would be made publically like Friday
afternoon or something like that. So then it will—everyone will—each
candidate will have the same amount of time to meet so that we can all go
Google on them—you know, you guys can start to learn about them, all the
things that—that the members of the Search Committee know about them.
Yeah, Senator Terlip.
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Terlip: I apologize because I came in late, but how large was the pool? Can
you all speak to that now?
Peters: Was it 37? 40? Close—somewhere around 40
Funderburk: 39 or 40ish was the total for
Peters: And we interviewed 9 at the airport.
Terlip: Thank you.
Peters: Other questions?
COMMENTS FROM FACULTY SENATE CHAIR SCOTT PETERS
Peters: So, along those lines then, one of the likely slots for the open
forum for presidential candidates is [Monday] January 28th at 3:00 p.m.
It’s—this is—none of this is set in stone yet, because we don’t know yet
how candidates’ schedules are going to match up with the—the sort of
schedule templates that—that the Committee has created, but that seems
like a likely spot for an open forum. That, of course, would be a [Faculty]
Senate meeting [time]. So, I emailed last week to give you all a head’s up
that it was quite possible that we would have to cancel that [Faculty]
Senate meeting, and if we do, I’ll look to reschedule one for the very
following week, February 4th I think it would be, that Monday. So please try
to keep that open on your calendars, if you can.
Also, just a quick thanks to everyone who was able to make it to the
Retreat last Thursday. I really appreciated people coming in and--and
giving up of their time over the Break to do that. Given the—given how
busy we are going to be here in the next few weeks with presidential search
issues—search presentations on campus, I thought it was particularly
important to get some traction made on that before the semester started.
We had some good discussions about—about these key issues that are part
of our year-long goals, and so the next step then is we’re going to give
the—the notes from those discussions to the [Faculty] Senate’s Budget
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Committee, which will start working on proposals to bring to us about
criteria that the Provost should use for allocating resources within
Academic Affairs, and about a proposal to take to a new president that
indicates how faculty would like to be involved in and give advice in a—in a
more routine way on budgeting and planning of the University. And then
[Senator] Mitch [Strauss] also had—had a work group—working group
going at our Retreat dealing with more regular evaluation of administrators
on campus, and they had a lively discussion. We had a good discussion
about it back as a whole group, and so if members of the [Faculty] Senate
would like to work with—with Senator Strauss on coalescing those into
formal proposals, certainly let him know or let me know, and I’ll help
coordinate that.
Any questions about anything before we move forward with our Agenda
today? All right. Well, welcome back. Here we go.
BUSINESS
MINUTES FOR APPROVAL
Peters: No minutes for approval today. We took care of that before we
left for our Break. And that brings us to two calendar items to consider for
docketing.
CONSIDERATION OF CALENDAR ITEMS FOR DOCKETING
Calendar Item 1171 for Docket #1067, Consultative Session with University
Relations (Jan. 14, immediately following 1169/1065) (Terlip/Bruess)
Peters: The first is Calendar Item 1171, Consultative Session with
University Relations, which, of course, I’ve recommended that we docket
today immediately following the discussion about the UR Style Manual.
Can I have a motion to docket that under those conditions?
Terlip: So move.
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Peters: Senator Terlip. And a second? Senator Bruess [who indicated]. Is
there any discussion on docketing this today? Seeing none. All in favor of
docketing this item today immediately following the petition on the
University Relations Style Manual, please say, “aye.” [ayes heard all
around] Opposed, “no”? [none heard] The motion passes.
Calendar Item 1172 for Docket #1068, Curriculum Changes—Women’s &
Gender Studies Program (regular order) (Kirmani/Cooley)
Peters: Finally, Calendar Item 1172, these are Curriculum Changes for the
Women’s and Gender Studies Program. You will all recall that this is one of
the programs that was marked for restructuring in the program changes
last year. As long as they are designated for restructuring, they cannot
admit students, and so they need to—this needs to get done as quickly as
possible. It’s been approved by both the CHAS Senate and the SBS Senate.
It’s going to be heard by the Graduate Council, I believe, on the 24th of
January. It would then—if we still have a meeting on the 28th, we would
expect to act on it at that point. If not, we’ll wait until the following
Monday. So we just need a motion to docket that in regular order.
Kirmani: So move.
Peters: Senator Kirmani. Is there a second?
Cooley: Second.
Peters: Seconded by Senator Cooley. Any discussion? Seeing none, we’ll
go to a vote. All in favor of docketing this in regular order, please say,
“aye.” [ayes heard all around] Opposed, “no”? [none heard] The motion
carries.
NEW BUSINESS
Peters: Is there any new business to bring to the [Faculty] Senate’s
attention? Then we go to our consideration of docketed items.
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CONSIDERATION OF DOCKETED ITEMS
DOCKET #1059, REPORT FROM AD HOC COMMITTEE ON POLICY PROCESS,
REGULAR ORDER (DEBERG/NEUHAUS)
Peters: Docket #1059, the changes on the policy process is—is not ready to
act on yet, so we’re hoping to be able to act on that at our next meeting.
DOCKET #1065, RESOLUTION TO EXEMPT FACULTY WORK FROM THE
UNIVERSITY RELATIONS STYLE MANUAL REQUIREMENTS, REGULAR ORDER
(TERLIP/SWAN)
Peters: So that brings us to Docket #1065, the Resolution to Exempt
Faculty Work from the University Relations Style Manual Requirements.
The wording of the motion is here [projected on large screen]—sorry,
wrong one. The wording to the motion is here
[ http://www.uni.edu/senate/current-year/current-and-pendingbusiness/resolution-exempt-faculty-work-university-relations-style- ].
We can see that the resolution asks “that Faculty materials associated with
their teaching, scholarship, or service work be exempted in full from the
Visual Identity and Style Manual.” And that “University Relations cease all
review of Faculty created materials developed for the purposes of teaching,
scholarship,” or—I think that’s supposed to be ‘service’—unless “(Faculty
ask for such review) and abide promptly and without question with the
actual duplication orders placed by Faculty.” So I need a motion—I need a
motion to bring that to the floor for discussion.
DeBerg: I so move.
Peters: Senator DeBerg. Is there a second?
Strauss: Strauss.
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Peters: Senator Strauss, thank you very much. Senator Heston,
unfortunately, who filed the petition, could not be with us. No, wait, do I
need to vote? Do we—no, we don’t need a vote to bring that to the floor.
Sorry. But Becky Hawbaker is here serving as her [Senator Heston’s]
alternate, so Senator Hawbaker can you please lead us off?
Hawbaker: Sure. So, Melissa [Heston] brought this resolution to the
Senate on behalf of many frustrated faculty and secretaries in the College
of Education, in particular, who have run into some difficulty when they
have legitimate reasons for making photocopy requests using such things
such as yellow paper or spelling out the month of September, and having it
be rejected because it doesn’t meet the style guide that’s established by
University Relations. And so her point is that that style guide was
developed without input from the faculty, that there are legitimate reasons
why faculty may need to copy things for their teaching, their scholarship, or
their service in ways that may deviate from the style guide but may be
legitimate for professional purposes. And there’s—there doesn’t seem to
be any appeal process or—or any—any way to get around it. In our
Department our secretary won’t even buy the yellow paper anymore so
that you could copy it yourself. I know that some faculty are paying for it
out of—out of their pocket to be able to do it. So, we do recognize that
there are reasons for the University to, you know, maintain some identity
and branding and all of that, but—and so the University logo, I don’t think
anyone has any problems with, but there’s things in the style guide that
seem a little over—over the top, so I think that’s the basic gist of it, and I
don’t know if others have had other frustrating incidents or not, but I have
a few examples, but I know Melissa [Heston] had pages and pages of them,
so—but
Peters: Senator DeBerg.
DeBerg: Can I have a couple examples?
Peters: Please, go ahead.
DeBerg: I’d like a couple.
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Peters: Oh, oh, you’re asking for examples?
DeBerg: Yeah.
Hawbaker: So, I have a personal example, and I—I teach a Level I class
Exploring Teaching. It often has 350, 400 students in it. I color-code some
of the handouts on the first day, and so, you know, it’s always—“There’s—
there’s the purple handout. There’s the yellow handout.” Not—so it can’t
be yellow now because yellow is for the University of Iowa. And so,
that’s—that’s their brand. That’s not our brand. And so I—I had to switch
to a different color. Now, is it—is it—is that a huge issue? No. It’s just
purple/yellow, that’s our colors. Other faculty, though, there were other
reasons for it, like they were doing the professional presentation for
elementary teachers. There was an activity that involved red, yellow,
green, you know, like the stop light. That was the colors, so they wanted to
copy it on that, but red was not ok, because that’s Iowa State. Yellow is not
ok, because that’s University of Iowa. Green is ok. So, and—and the—the
color of the paper thing seems to be the big thing, but there’s lots of other
ones that get rejected because the logo isn’t in the right place, or it’s the
wrong version of the logo, or things like that.
DeBerg: I guess, well, how would UMPR, or whatever they are called now,
how—how would they even know about these materials?
Hawbaker: Well, with the closure of Print Services, print requests that are
paid for out of the Department Budget go to University Relations first.
DeBerg: Oh, wow. So everything that goes from a Department to
CopyWorks goes through you all [addressing the representatives from
University Relations present]?
James O’Connor, Executive Director, University Relations: Not necessarily.
DeBerg: Well, what does and what doesn’t? Ok, thank you, Becky.
Peters: Take a couple of minutes to explain the style manual and how the
work flow works and everything.
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O’Connor: Sure. Yeah, absolutely. First, thank you for –thank you for
asking us here. We really appreciate the opportunity to clear up some
misunderstandings, and Becky [Hawbaker] nailed it. Legitimately, there
were some miscommunication on our side, and—and misunderstandings
came because of that, and we want to apologize for that.
We met with the Academic Department Heads back on October 15th and
had a very good discussion, and we heard in—we’d been hearing input all
semester long. We introduced the new Visual Identity and Style Guide back
at the beginning of the semester. It had been in place for several years, but
it hadn’t been updated. We were waiting to do that. We did it, and we
introduced it. And we knew that this would be a—a—there would be some
feedback, there would be input, because anytime you come out with a new
textbook, anything, there’s always changes that need to come as it evolves.
So we met with the Academic Department Heads on October 5 [sic], had a
great discussion with them, heard a lot of the same input, and we instituted
changes immediately following that. I apologize. We assumed that that
information had been shared broadly with the faculty, and it hadn’t,
apparently, obviously.
We’ve addressed these things moving forward. I couldn’t agree more. The
last thing we want to do is interfere with your scholarly activity and your
classroom activities and your materials in your classroom and materials
used for scholarly activity. That was miscommunicated. There were some
over zealousness, frankly, on some—part of some of our staff. We’ve
corrected that since. So, we’ve made some changes as we expected. We
wanted to give the style book this semester to get through to find out what
were the major things that needed to be clarified, updated, et cetera.
We’ve made those changes, and moving forward I don’t think you’re going
to see those problems anymore.
Brislawn: So, specifically, we can talk about the modifications and the
update. So, I don’t know a lot of you, so I’m Kim Brislawn. I am the
Associate Director in University Relations, and I work very closely with the
creative and the marketing and specifically on the communication
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specialists across campus and the creation of the style guide. This
approved color—ok, there were two issues really when I met with different
areas. I met with, like we said, the Department Heads. I met with
Department of Residence. I met with Student Government, President
Allen, Provost Gibson. Really wanted to get feedback so that we could
make the modifications that would represent everyone’s needs.
So the two areas that were a point of concern were the color combinations
to avoid and then also the logo use. So, the color combinations to avoid,
we modified this section, and we have pretty much copied what Iowa State
does. So Iowa and Iowa State’s are pretty similar. Iowa State’s is a little bit
more aggressive in the fact that they don’t allow the use of purple at all,
but we modified this to say that this is a recommendation instead of an
absolute. Before, there was the tone of “you must,” and now it’s a
recommendation of “be aware,” “you should avoid,” but the use of yellow
paper, when we met with the Department Heads in October was something
that we discussed, and it wasn’t anything that we were—it was certainly
not the hill we were going to die on to say, so that sounds like that was a
miscommunication and not disseminated further, and I—I’ll take
responsibility for that, because I assumed once we’d gone there and had
that discussion that that information had been communicated. So,
O’Connor: And to be really clear, when we—the Visual Identity Guide,
what we’re talking about is promotional materials
Brislawn: Right.
O’Connor: not faculty scholarly activity or, like you said, the syllabi, things
like that that you hand out in your class. That’s not what we’re talking
about. We’re talking about promotional materials, and we want to, you
know, really frame it up very tightly that way. And it—it—the
miscommunication that was out there and it was—and it was true
miscommunication, it—you know how things spread. And it—and it caused
a lot of consternation, and we really feel bad about that. We want to
apologize for that. That was not our—our intent at all.
Peters: Ok, then
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Brislawn: But then—I’m sorry
Peters: I’m sorry, I have a quick question on promotional materials. Would
a—would a paper being presented at a professional conference, would that
be considered a promotional material, or not?
O’Connor: No. No.
Peters: Ok, I just wanted to make sure.
O’Connor: And when—and when we go to that next sec—next page [of
projected information from flashdrive UR provided regarding upcoming
changes to their website]
Peters: Like a poster—poster presentation or something like that?
O’Connor: Yeah, a poster presentation about your research? No.
Peters: Ok.
O’Connor: Not necessarily. But if—if you go to that next page, we have
two pages that we’re updating in the style guide, and you scroll half-way
down there, it says “new.” There you go. That—that’s really the key point
there.
Brislawn: So, this was the second area that through all my conversations
seemed to be a sticking point, and so we’ve modified this language to talk
specifically about “promotional material, print and electronic, paid for by
the University or related to University-sponsored activities must carry the
appropriate University logo or word-mark.” And having said that, all
approved UNI sub-brand logos meet this requirement, so a lot of the
Colleges and Departments have their own logo, and underneath it says
University of Northern Iowa. That certainly meets that—that bullet point.
And then the asterisk that we’ve added is “promotional material excludes
material used solely in the classroom or for scholarly activity,” which covers
all of the concerns that I heard when I met with the Department Heads and
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Provost Gibson and—and the individual conversations that I’ve heard from
the different faculty members or Department secretaries who have
contacted us. So we’ve had a lot of really great feedback and meaningful
discussions, and I’ve heard what’s been said, and we’ve talked to the
College communication representatives and gotten feedback from them,
and the Deans of each College as well have weighed in. So I think that
these modifications address the concerns specifically related to logo use
and the competitive color concerns that are currently on the table.
Peters: Secretary Edginton.
Edginton: I appreciate your clarification of the policy and the willingness of
being flexible and agile in changing the framing of it. Part of the ongoing
conversation that we’ve had on campus has to do with faculty governance
and the role of the Faculty Senate in terms of oversight in the promulgation
of policies, the introduction of policies, and I listened very carefully to your
conversation about the groups of people that you talked to, and you missed
a whole constituency that seeks to have great influence not only now but in
the future in controlling the creation of policy and then the promulgation of
that policy across campus. So, I guess what I would ask you to do is when
you tick off those groups that you’re going to speak to in the future you
must come to the Faculty Senate
Brislawn: Ok.
Edginton: and have that conversation because we—you know, we
represent that view. Very important.
Brislawn: Sure. And—and I—I’ll own that, because I’ve been here a year
and a half, and I didn’t—you know, I thought talking to the Department
Heads and the Deans met that need, and I now know differently, so sorry.
Peters: Senator Neuhaus.
Neuhaus: Yeah, if I should bring up the new guide that you have out there.
What’s—I imagine that lives out on the internet
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Brislawn: It will.
O’Connor: The Guide—the Guide does. These new pages have not been
incorporated yet. We wanted to talk to you first.
Neuhaus: Oh, ok. Ok.
Brislawn: What I didn’t want to do is I didn’t want to introduce changes
and then have some feedback from this group that made sense to modify
again and then introduce yet another version. I didn’t want to confuse the
audiences across campus. So I haven’t launched this to the campus
community yet. I wanted to wait until after this meeting.
Neuhaus: But, you know, I think one of the things we’ll want then is some
mechanism that, you know, either you communicate with—with one of the
gentlemen there [the Faculty Senate officers] and then they send that out,
but just—just so that that’s something that we can point to because I
think—I think, you know, the idea with the Department Heads was
probably a good one but maybe not all of them took the trouble to spread
the word.
O’Connor: I think that’s a fair statement that what—from the feedback,
yeah.
Brislawn: Right. [laughter all around]
Neuhaus: I think if we have somewhere that—that we can point. I—I know
I’d like to be able to point my guys in that direction, because I—you know, I
think some of them have heard the—the horror story version, and I’d like
to be able to say, “Hey, just give that a read and see what it says now.”
O’Connor: Absolutely. And—and that’s—and Chris [Edginton] to address
your concern, we intend to do [projector screen roles up loudly on its own
with various comments from startled persons present]. Our intent is to
update this annually or at least go through it and see if there’s updates
necessary, so it’s very easy then to come to the Faculty Senate and all the
other groups and say, “Ok, we—we’ve got some changes or updates that
18
we’re anticipating. Take a look at them. Give us some feedback.” You
know, et cetera. And but—that also we get phone calls every day. We
work with folks every day. We get emails. We keep track of that stuff, and
so as we’re going through the years, we’re saying, “Ok, you know, what do
we have? Have we—you know, are we at a tipping point where we need to
do another edition?” You know, hopefully we’ll be doing it just annually,
but you never know as things change.
Peters: Senator MacLin and then Senator Terlip.
MacLin: I apologize for being late, and you may have already addressed
this, but when you said that you met with the Department Heads in the
Fall, was that like each and every one or was that a big head
Brislawn: It was at the meeting that
O’Connor: It was their—their regular meeting of the Academic Department
Heads.
Peters: Council.
MacLin: Ok. Ok, thank you.
Peters: Senator Terlip.
Terlip: Yeah, promotional material for service work then would still be
under your style guidelines, is that correct?
Brislawn: Could you give me a little bit more definition of what you mean
by “promotional material for service work”? Would that be like
promotional fliers or brochures or
Terlip: Could be.
Brislawn: So, those we would still want the University logo of some kind on
it. So, whether that be a sub-brand or the nameplate or the word-mark,
19
you would still want whatever that service were to be tied to the
University, correct?
Terlip: No. That wasn’t my question. It was the style guideline that we’d
use, because you’re using AP style guidelines, correct? And Jim [O’Connor]
will appreciate this. I’ve been through many conversations with Dean
Kruckeberg where at times
O’Connor: Who’s no longer here.
Terlip: where at times in a particular discipline AP is not going to be the
correct way to do things.
O’Connor: We’re very willing to be flexible.
Terlip: Ok.
O’Connor: We—the standard we’re held to is the AP style guide in the
things that we produce. We—we have to hold ourselves to that standard.
Certainly I understand what you’re talking about, but, you know, the key
thing is, you know, the bigger picture is when you’re doing something or
your students are doing something out there, we want to make sure that
you’re getting credit for it and that it’s easily recognizable as University of
Northern Iowa. That’s really the bottom line.
Terlip: Well, as I was listening to things, it appeared to me that somebody
got out the AP style manual in a lot of cases and were telling faculty
members how to write when they were using disciplines specific to their
O’Connor: Right, and like I said that was part of—that was part of the
miscommunication was we had folks who were trying to be very diligent in
their job, and those nuances hadn’t been explained to them well enough at
that point.
Brislawn: I’d also like to address your [to another Senator] question about
the copying and Copy—the relationship with CopyWorks, unless you
[Hawbaker] had something else you wanted to add?
20
Hawbaker: I don’t have anything else right now. [too quiet to hear for
sure]
Brislawn: Ok. Ok. So just a little bit of background, so when Print Services
closed, that was a very difficult decision, and at that time we did a lot of
research and analysis and decided to do an RFP and partner with another
copy operation, and CopyWorks won that RFP. And one of the conditions—
because they are a business also trying to make money—was that they had
one central location where all the orders came through. And so all the
orders are submitted through University Relations. We have a process.
“URprinting” as the email address that people submit orders to and 95% of
the time when it’s something that comes from faculty is automatically
forwarded on and printed. There have been times where we’ve asked
questions. There might have been some overzealous—I—you know, I’m
not the one that does it, so I can’t speak in absolutes. But I know that there
have been times when we’ve responded with questions because not all the
printing detail has been included. There have been a few times that just in
a quick scan we’ve caught spelling errors, and people have been very
appreciative of that. And there could be examples where there was an
error that was made and feedback was provided that was unappreciated.
And, you know, I’ve received some of those emails and calls, and I’ve
responded to them, but overall the—the process that we have in place
works very well. Orders are turned around same day. We check that email
hourly to make sure that things are ordered. And CopyWorks does an
excellent job, high-quality work, and they turn things around same day in
some cases. All of the tests and—and confidential material from faculty are
coded that way, and they are sealed in a box at CopyWorks, and no student
employees are involved in that—that job ticket. So, I feel like we have a
pretty solid process in place. And I meet with the manager there on a
regular basis.
And if there are specific concerns that you have or that Melissa [Heston]
has that she hasn’t communicated or examples, that would be really helpful
for me to go back and research, because it’s hard to talk in generalities and
have me be able to fix it. You’re—you know what I’m saying?
21
O’Connor: One of the key features, though, that—that’s a real positive that
I think kind of got missed, you know, and I understand because people
were unhappy, is that when you—when people send their orders through
us and they go to CopyWorks through us, there’s a significant discount
that’s attached to it.
Brislawn: Yeah.
O’Connor: If you just go directly to CopyWorks, you are not eligible for that
discount, so that’s—that’s a real key. And—and then we see it as a real
win-win.
Peters: Senator Hawbaker.
Hawbaker: Well, I just—I wondered if, since you’re revising this, what you
said earlier about these rules were really meant for promotional materials,
and what does that mean, and how is that different from the teaching and
research work that faculty would use? So faculty would use this as a guide
but not a requirement, is that right? For teaching things or for
O’Connor: For your teaching materials, frankly I wouldn’t even look at
them. It’s—it’s not meant—it’s not germane.
Hawbaker: Ok, so I’m—I’m wonder—I’m looking at the motion and saying,
“Well, what would you say about this ‘that Faculty materials associated
with their teaching, scholarship, or service work be exempt’? Is that—
how—what would you say?”
O’Connor: I’d say, “We couldn’t agree with you more.” And we thought
we’d nailed that down back in October. So that’s, you know, we were
concerned, too, when we got the petition in December. It came out of left
field, because we thought we’d addressed it.
Brislawn: The only question I would have about the service work is who
the audience is that’s receiving the material? Is that something that’s going
external? Is that going to prospective students? And, if so, we would want
22
to ensure that the correct logo is used and that the University—the
University’s name was represented—it’s a missed opportunity. So, that
would be my—my only feedback there, which makes sense. I think
everybody would agree we’re on one team, working together.
Peters: Senator DeBerg.
DeBerg: Well, I have a question. A couple years ago I—I had a grant, and I
produced a huge report that I had copied at CopyWorks on my grant
account. Now, that would be required to go through this process?
O’Connor: No.
Brislawn: So, well, to get the discount.
O’Connor: But to get the discount.
Brislawn: Yeah, so what you would do
O’Connor: If you want to get a discount, come through us, and we’ll help
you out to get the discount.
DeBerg: Well, what if I—what if my report were confidential, and I wanted
the discount. Can—could we send things through you labeled confidential
that you all wouldn’t open?
Brislawn: Yeah. So this is what I would do
DeBerg: Really?
Brislawn: I would—we’ve had this happen where people have just stopped
into our office with their copy and said, “I need to get this copied.” And we
don’t flip through it, and they just explain exactly what you did. Or they’ll
call us and say, “I have this, and I really don’t want it to be shared.” We just
send John an email and say, “There’s going to be a job coming from Betty,
and she’s not going to have an approval form. This is what it is. This is why,
and please move forward and afford her the discount.” We’ve done that
23
on numerous occasions, and normally Janis will just give myself or Jim a
heads up in case after the fact, because there’s not that documentation,
then we put it back into the system because why we—I track it in a
database so that when I do my next RFP, I know how many copies we made
so that I can accurately get and negotiate a lower rate when the contract
comes due, which it’s coming due soon. So, yes, absolutely we could do
that.
DeBerg: Well, couldn’t I just send it by email, say “Confidential,” and you
send it on?
Brislawn: Well, sure. Yeah.
O’Connor: Yeah.
DeBerg: Ok.
Brislawn: And explain in the email—just explain in the email what—why,
you know, just so we have some context.
DeBerg: So we would have to justify all the confidential things that we sent
through?
O’Connor: No.
Brislawn: No, it’s just
O’Connor: No, just telling us this is a confidential document.
DeBerg: Can’t we just say, “It’s confidential.” and leave it at that?
O’Connor: Yeah.
Brislawn: Yeah, but then you could say, “It’s confidential. This is a report.
It’s confidential. I need 1 copy. I’d like it to be charged to this account. I’d
like it delivered or picked up.”
24
DeBerg: Well, yeah, ok.
Brislawn: But give us the context so that we know what to do with it.
DeBerg: Oh, I understand that.
Brislawn: And then we can label it, “This is a report for Betty, and she’ll be
picking it up.”—or, you know, if it’s a test, you know, we don’t open any of
those things. We get confidential things sent to us all the time from faculty.
We just—we—we note what it is, we put the number of copies in the
system, and then we pass it through.
Peters: Senator Kirmani.
Kirmani: Yeah. There are some occasions when in addition to UNI’s logo,
there has to be a logo of some outside organization also. For example, we
have a Professional Science Master’s Program recognized by the Council of
Graduate Schools, and as part of that it is required that any promotional
material we send out must also have the logo of the CGS.
O’Connor: Uh huh.
Kirmani: Now that would be in addition to UNI, is that ok?
O’Connor: Oh, sure. Oh, absolutely.
Brislawn: Yep.
O’Connor: Absolutely.
Brislawn: If you ever
Kirmani: That would not be in _________________ though?
O’Connor: Pardon?
Kirmani: That would not be in ______________________?
25
Brislawn: Sure.
O’Connor: No, it’s absolutely
Brislawn: Have you ever receiv—have you ever been told “No” to that?
I’m just curious so that I can go back and do
Kirmani: Well, I never have. I just pretend.
Brislawn: Ok.
DeBerg: What if their logo is red and gold.
Brislawn: Well, we’ve worked with that before. I mean, so there have
been organizations. You can’t change somebody’s color identity, just like
we wouldn’t as well. So, you know, you do the best you can, and you—
the—we’re not working in absolutes. We’re working—you know, I just got
a poster sent through to me today from the Oscars, and the poster ended
up being black and gold with a white UNI nameplate on it. Well, the Oscars
are gold. What are you going to do about it? You can’t change their logo or
their statue color. I mean, it’s just—they have their own brand as well, and
we acknowledge that.
O’Connor: But what we can do, and this is something if you can feed back
to your colleagues, is we’ve got professional designers on staff, and there
are a lot of times when, you know, they look at something. To them,
something’s a very easy fix, and it can be, frankly, just a few minutes, and
they—they come up with ways to handle these sorts of things to make
things look sharp, to make them look more professional than they started
out, and that’s a very easy thing, and we provide that service.
DeBerg: For free?
O’Connor: Yes, for free. No charge.
26
Brislawn: Yeah, so design and photography services became no charge this
Fall.
O’Connor: This Fall.
Brislawn: Yeah.
O’Connor: So we’re here to help. We want—we want your materials to
look as sharp as you are, and that’s—that’s really important. [light laughter
and murmurings]
Peters: Chair Funderburk.
Funderburk: Earlier I heard the remark made that there seemed to be no
appeal process if there was an issue. Can you go into what somebody does
do if something’s being kicked out? Is there a process?
Brislawn: Yeah, so we—yeah, so I’ve gotten—Janis usually will bring it to
my attention if somebody’s upset or concerned or has inquired. And either
they contact me directly or they’ll shoot me an email or sometimes I’ve
been able to contact—reach out to them and talk through it and come up
with some solutions. I know Jim [O’Connor] is always available as well, if
I’m not. So, I’ve had numerous conversations, and it just sounds like we
didn’t get connected to the right person. But we have several people who
check the email, and I know that sometimes we’ve discover—we’ve
discovered that sometimes there’s discrepancies, like I might say, “That’s
fine.” And somebody else might say, “Oh, my gosh, no, we have to send
back a question.” And so we’ve really been able to, through these
interviews and the research I’ve done with different groups across campus,
correct that so that we’re all on the same page and singing from the same
songbook and following the same parameters. So, absolutely, if you have
questions, suggestions, if you’re angry, please be kind, but I—I’m open to
all feedback.
Peters: I have Senator East and then Senator Terlip.
27
East: Relative to the—the appeal process, it sounds like this is sort of an ad
hoc process that if the person who gives the answer of “no” happens to
pass that along to you, then there might be an appeal process. But if the
person just says “no,” the faculty member doesn’t know in any appeal
process. They don’t know who said “no” or why “no” was said. How is the
faculty member supposed to know anything about an appeal process if the
person just says “no” and doesn’t contact you?
Brislawn: That’s a good point and something that I probably need to clarify
and develop further. That’s a good suggestion. I don’t have a formal
process, but that doesn’t mean I can’t make one.
O’Connor: But also
East: It—it needs to be available to faculty
Brislawn: Absolutely.
East: without them having to take an initiative to say, “Oh, wonder what I
do now? They just told me ‘no.’”
Brislawn: Sure.
O’Connor: I was—and we asked—we were talking today to try to
anticipate questions you might have, and one of the things we came up
with is that at least in recent history, the past few weeks, you know,
Decem—November December, the word “no” has been used very, very
sparingly. What it often is is somebody forgot—you know, I do this all the
time—like filling out a form, forget to check whatever box, you know,
what—is it black and white? Is it 4-color? How many quant—I mean, what
was your quantity? It isn’t “no.” It’s “There’s missing information.” That’s
much more common.
Brislawn: Right.
O’Connor: That’s the vast majority of the calls back—is, “Pardon me, but
you forgot to check this box. Can you just tell me, you know, did you want
28
it folded? You know, which way? That direction?” It’s not “no.” It’s a
follow-up call.
Brislawn: And another very frequent response is that sometimes a logo’s
copied off the web instead of using the native file that you can download
from the University Relations HomePage, and so that makes it look very
granular, and it doesn’t give the best appearance, and so often when we
see that, we will respond and attach the correct logo and say, “We notice
that the logo isn’t high resolution. Please replace it with the one that’s
attached.” And that happens 10% of the time just because people that are
designing don’t necessarily have the design suite available to them that we
do in the professional design staff. So, very rarely would anybody ever
receive—actually I can say I’ve never seen an email that just said “no.” I’ve
seen emails that have said, “This is my concern with this print request.”
And there’s usually an explanation and an attachment to—to help define it.
But, you’re right, I do probably—I do need to formalize an appeal process
and have that communicated as part of the updated style guide.
East: Well, either—either you’re talking about recent history or we have
faculty who are lying to us that said
Brislawn: I don’t have examples.
East: they were—that things were cancelled. [multiple voices at once]
MacLin (?): I think there’s a lot of people who are now self-editing, like
Hawbaker: I—I don’t send in requests on yellow, because I was told “no”
several times, and so I just say, “Ok.”
Brislawn: You were told “no”? Just the word “no” was in the email, or was
there some kind of explanation? Because I—I will research this for you.
Hawbaker: There was no explanation given, and it was early. It was early
in the semester, and so things have changed, but I haven’t pushed it
because I’m not a pusher. [light laughter around]
29
Brislawn: Well, please come back, because you can save a significant
amount of money by running your jobs through CopyWorks, and I think
you’ll find it to be a much better process.
Peters: Senator Terlip.
Terlip: Yeah, I think that in order to help the faculty, which is what you all
indicate what you would like to do, it might be nice to not only have the
appeal process made public, but maybe you ought to develop some
protocols with your staff. For example, I would be angry if the only thing I
did was not download a file and you sent it back to me and caused a 2week delay or something, when you could have fixed that very easily. I
mean, it seems like there are some things you can triage. So maybe you
ought to do a focus group with faculty to kind of figure out ways to solve
problems and then protocol for appealing decisions.
O’Connor: And—and we’ve been doing that with the communication
roundtable folks, and we’ve been looking at—because we’ve asked them
and said, “Here’s the—here’s what we’ve been getting for questions and
concerns.” And—and absolutely we do that on a daily basis on the ones we
can. The big—the big problem is quite often people are designing things in
software that frankly isn’t professional standard, and we don’t have access
to it, and so we have to—we have to give coaching back to the people in
the—whoever designed it, so that—because they have to fix it, because
there’s no way we can fix it because it’s not professional standard.
Terlip: Well, and—and that would be understandable. I guess I’m saying
that it seems that you need to speak to the faculty members more directly
than going through the Department Heads and community representatives,
and maybe just some plain old, you know, off the street faculty folks might
be helpful.
O’Connor: Oh, yeah. We—we talk to them on a daily basis. Absolutely.
Brislawn: Sure.
Peters: Other questions or comments on this topic?
30
Peters: Senator DeBerg.
DeBerg: I call the question.
Peters: Ok. The question has been called. All in favor of proceeding to a
vote on the resolution, please say, “aye.” [ayes heard all around] Opposed,
“no”? [none heard] The resolution again is that Faculty materials
associated with teaching, scholarship, or service work be exempted in full
from the Visual Identity and Style Manual requirements; and that the Office
of University Relations cease all review of Faculty-created materials
developed for the purposes of teaching, scholarship, or service (except in
those cases where Faculty explicitly ask for such review) and abide promptly
and without question with the actual duplication orders placed by Faculty.
All in favor of the resolution, please say, “aye.” [ayes heard all around]
Opposed, please say, “no”? [none heard] The motion carries. It sounds
like much of the work has already been done, so thank you for a good
discussion on that.
DOCKET #1071, CONSULTATIVE SESSION WITH UNIVERSITY RELATIONS
(TERLIP/BRUESS)
Peters: And with that we will just go right into a broader discussion about
issues with University Relations, and Kim [Brislawn], you have to take off.
Is that correct? You need your flashdrive back?
Brislawn: No, no, no. When we are done. I’ll grab the flashdrive when
we’re done.
Peters: Oh, ok. Ok. And I tell you—I’ll start you off with the soft ball. I’ve
been reading a bunch of Inside UNI, you know, about this new Inside UNI.
Do you want to give us like a—not—we don’t have—you know, we’ve only
got about 45 minutes, so give us like a 5-minutes or less—maybe like a 2minute summary of what this—what Inside UNI is and how it’s going to
benefit us.
31
O’Connor: Well, I’ll let Stacey [Christensen] answer that. It’s—it’s—it’s her
area.
Christensen: I know many of you, but I’m Stacey Christensen. I’m Manager
of Public Relations so do a lot of work with media relations, outreach. A
smaller portion of the responsibility has to do with internal communication,
certainly a very important communication piece. We have a couple of
editors in our office that work on UNI Online and MyUNIverse News, and
essentially UNI Online and MyUNIverse News will cease to exist this
Thursday.
We are very excited to launch Inside UNI for Faculty and Staff and current
students, so tomorrow will be the last UNI Online. Inside UNI for Faculty
and Staff really is a multi-media website. It’s a communication platform
that many universities and colleges are going to. It’s a better way to tell the
University’s story. So instead of just a laundry list of today’s dining
specials/these are the hours, we are able to tell faculty stories; we’re able
to share accolades now; we’re able to give top news stories, breaking news.
And so, essentially, you’ll still get an email in your inbox on Tuesday and
Thursday mornings. Really that’s just to prompt you to go to the Inside UNI
for Faculty and Staff website, and there will be a massive link on the
bottom that will take you there. So, really, when you look at your email,
you’re only going to have just a very few announcements, because we want
you to go to your Faculty and Staff page, and it is the Faculty and Staff link.
The whole UNI website, the HomePage and the SubPages have been
redesigned, and you will see that on Thursday.
So, the Faculty and Staff page has been designed to communicate more to
you and to share information with you about your colleagues. So when you
go to the page, there will always be a weekly feature story, Get to Know,
you know, Professor Edginton, and then you’ll go in; you’ll see a nice
environmental photo and the story may be about a recent research he did
with a student or some wonderful, you know, award that he’s gotten. And
so we have several stories that we’re working on, and so one of the
requests I would have is for you all to share your suggestions on faculty and
staff in your Departments that would make a good story. A couple of
reasons for doing that: you get to learn a little bit more about your
32
colleagues, and the outside world of prospective students and families get
to learn more about what the faculty and staff are doing at UNI. So, we’re
very, very excited about that.
The second thing will be the ability to have real-time announcements, so
instead of just getting your announcements on Tuesday and Thursday, daily
that site will be updated. So, when we get people submitting things, “Gosh,
I missed the deadline. This is a great thing happening tomorrow. I haven’t
had a chance to tell anybody about it.” We can go right in and pop it up,
and it will be the first announcement on the page. So we really have a lot
more flexibility to get that news out there now as well. And then we also
have the ability share some of the great news releases and stories that
we’re doing and coverage we’re getting as well. So, a brand new feature
that I think will be of interest to all of you and that I would like a little input
about is the new accolades section. So accolades is kudos, so it’s an
opportunity to talk about faculty and staff awards and honors, and having a
little bit of—oh, a challenge, I guess, in trying to determine—because you
have such limited space, and if you put everything in there, it just becomes
this laundry list of things that nobody will ever read. And so at this time we
weren’t going to do presentations and publications, but we were looking
more for significant national and international—and I hate to even say
“national and international”—but we need it to be high-level, significant
awards and honors that we can update on a weekly basis. And so there will
be an accolade submission form for that as well. We can’t use everything,
just like we can’t use all the announcements, but I am always really open to
communication and to suggestions and would welcome that, if you have
questions along the way as we unveil this.
So, with anything new—I mean, launching a new website and launching a
new communication platform is—is huge. There’s bugs along the way that
you have to work out, and it’s never completely done. And so we had
feedback with Inside UNI, when we made changes this Fall, and I met with
Gloria in the Provost’s Office and some faculty, and we made some changes
along the way. So I’m always open to that feedback. So that’s at the high
level.
Peters: Senator DeBerg.
33
DeBerg: Well, just a couple of—there are bigger issues than this new
platform to talk about today, but I don’t understand when you say, “We
don’t have room for all the announcements?” How can you not have room
for everything on a website? That doesn’t make any sense to me.
Christensen: You certainly have room. I guess it’s in best practices, so, I
mean, you have page tabs at the bottom, so I guess it’s in what you want to
do. I mean, you could put up 75 announcements a day, but on the actual
HomePage itself, say you’re only ever going to see 12.
DeBerg: On the front page?
Christensen: Yes. So if you—you know, so if you do that, then it gets—it
just becomes this noise in the background, and that’s what we heard with
UNI Online last Spring and the cha—why we made the changes. We did a
survey. We did focus groups. And we had faculty and staff telling us that it
was becoming the John Deere Swap Sheet, and I would agree. Right? Like,
everybody was trying to put stuff in there. You know, “Today’s Dining
Special,” or “Today’s
DeBerg: I—I like that.
Christensen: Sure, some do. It’s a
DeBerg: I mean, there’s nothing that sucks much more than the UNI
Calendar page that we were all directed to for special events. [many
murmurings] I mean, what a wo—what a bad idea that was. The other
thing I want to say is that I—I love reading faculty kudos. I read every single
one. I don’t care how many of them are on there. I think if a faculty
member or if a Department thinks that it’s something that should go in,
fine. And my last qu—comment is a question. Is this like an alumni
magazine? I mean, what is this new website then?
Christensen: No.
DeBerg: It’s just for faculty?
34
Christensen: It’s ke—yep. So when you go to the UNI HomePage and
you’ve got your links for audiences, you have Current Students,
Faculty/Staff, Prospective Students. When you go on your Faculty and Staff
link, it’s your HomePage now.
DeBerg: Ok.
Christensen: And what’s great about that is that in addition—I missed a
whole part. So the central part of the Faculty and Staff page is resources
for faculty and staff.
DeBerg: Ok.
Christensen: So it will be a series of 6 boxes and links about living, working,
doing business. This is just in addition.
DeBerg: Well, like our—like MyUNIverse.
Christensen: A glorified MyUNIverse. So, like, one is on Employment and
HR Services.
DeBerg: Ok. Ok. So my other comment is I think that the faculty knows
that it’s a good faculty. I think that the public needs to know more that
we’re a good faculty. I think the Administration and you all need to know
more that we’re a good faculty. The Legislature needs to know more. So I
guess I want to see stories about faculty and faculty kudos not just for us.
We see—that seems to me to be the least important audience for that.
O’Connor: You’re—you’re right. And we’re talking about specifically that
page. What we haven’t talked about is the HomePage, the University
HomePage.
Christensen: There’s a link, yeah.
O’Connor: The top of the page will include—will include stories about
faculty every time.
35
DeBerg: Wow.
Christensen: Yep.
O’Connor: And there will be links to faculty kudos from the University
HomePage.
DeBerg: Wow.
O’Connor: So those things—what we’re telling you is what we’d like to see
you folks do is make Inside UNI for Faculty and Staff your pop-up page, so
when you turn on your computer every morning, there’s the most recent
announcements and all that sort of stuff. But when you just type in
UNI.edu and you go to the University HomePage, you’ll see stories about
faculty. You’ll see stories
DeBerg: Now?
O’Connor: Yeah, starting Thursday. So it’s—we’re very excited. It’s a
completely new approach.
Christensen: There’s been many about faculty, though, Betty. There’s
many on the UNI HomePage now, yeah.
Peters: Let’s see. I had Chair Funderburk next and then Senator East.
Funderburk: So, there will still be an email, but the actual announcements
won’t go out in any sort of an email form anymore?
Christensen: There will be—there will be like 3-5. Let’s say, 3-5 in that
email that really prompts you to go to that website where you’ll see the—
the additional announcements.
Funderburk: Well, I mean, because the issue is unless the website works
better than everything else, the University is pretty useless on your mobile
phone, and that’s how I get my reminders. I think every bit of research
36
shows that in a passive form if I can look for announcements never works
versus an active one,
O’Connor: Right.
Funderburk: and I hope that in this change, unlike the last one, it’s wide—
you know, we had quite the exchange just to be able to publicize the
campus-wide faculty meeting this Fall because it was outside the
boundaries of an announcement.
Christensen: We did. Yeah. I mean, I hope you all can appreciate
Funderburk: I’m kind of the opposite of Betty [DeBerg]. I don’t have time
to read the faculty kudos all morning. When I get a break, I’ll go look for
them.
Christensen: Right. Yeah, it’s—it’s—you know, it’s a grey area. It’s one of
those things you’re never going to make everybody happy, right? I mean, I
just—I’m in a position where it’s the nature of the beast. Not—can’t make
everybody happy, so you’ve got people who scream that you have so much
stuff in there. You have people who scream that you don’t have enough in
there. But the one consistent thing is that--and like it or not, right?—and I
don’t know if I’m a 100% sold on it, but it is what it is—we have the
University Calendar of Events, and that exists. And to replicate and spend
all that time basically putting all the events into a newsletter just isn’t
efficient.
Funderburk: The Calendar of Events is fairly useless.
Christensen: Yeah. People are open to their op—yeah, that’s not my area,
so I can’t speak to it.
Funderburk: It has—well, I—I mean, ultimately it is. It has 25% of the
events on there, so therefore, if you’re actually trying to schedule
something or find something, it’s fairly useless, because it’s not utilized
enough to make it an effective combined calendar. You have multiple
37
calendar systems even for their own offering on campus that haven’t been
fully integrated.
Christensen: Yeah, I think at a higher level that needs to be discussed—
absolutely needs to be loo—I think people would agree that it—it’s not
perfect.
Brislawn: You made a good point I just want to touch on briefly—is you
said you get a lot of those on your phone, and the new website that is
launching is responsive, so it’ll reformat for the mobile side or for a tablet
or for the web, too, so I—I think it’s going to be a great resource.
Funderburk: And I guess the point is that I would not click on a link
because I don’t want to tend to want to use up my data looking for that,
but my email, it’s there. So, if it’s not on email, they are not very useful to a
lot of people.
Peters: Senator East.
East: I have a similar kind of concern about the push versus pull. If—if you
want me to see something, want me not to see something, the way to have
that happen is to put it in the webpage someplace, because I’m not going
to go look.
O’Connor: That’s why we’re sending an email.
East: You have to get my attention, so if there’s some—so we need to be
sure that anything that all of this group should see should—is not just
access via the webpage. You have to send me a message saying, “Go look
here.”
O’Connor: You’re going to get those twice a week.
East: And—and I’ve been doing that. I’ve been doing what I thought was
my job almost religiously looking at UNI Online at least scanning the entire
thing back even when it was huge, scanning the entire thing to see, ok, is
there anything I really need to be paying attention to? I agree that it’s
38
better to have the stuff that I don’t have to pay attention to not be in there,
but if I have to pay attention to it, then you need to directly send me
something saying, “Pay attention to this.”
Christensen: Right.
East: Don’t—you cannot bury it in a webpage somewhere and expect me
to go find it or look for it, because I’m not going to use it. I’m kind of like
Jeff [Funderburk]. I’m—I’m not going to go look at those things. I’m—I’m
task oriented. I have plenty of work to do. So I’m going to do the work I
have to do, my teaching, my scholarship, my service, and if there’s time left
over I might be curious about what else is going on at UNI, but I’m not
very—I’m not nearly as productive as I used to be, so it takes all of my time
now just to do my job. So, it—it’s very—it will be very important for that—
somehow that information gets pushed to me so that I actually see it,
and—and so—I—I—and I worry about who’s going to decide what the
faculty should see.
DeBerg: Or have to see or need to see.
East: What’s important for the faculty to see. We’re talking about a policy
revision process, and we’ve been told that there are hundreds, if not
thousands, of policies that need to be revised, and somebody on the faculty
should probably see all of those or should be aware of all of those. That
sounds to me like something that fits the mold for “You don’t see all of
these.” They get buried somewhere in—in a posting that says, “These
things are up for review.” But if you don’t know that they’re up for review,
then you don’t go looking for them. And so it’s—it’s—it’s critical that you
figure out who’s going to be deciding what gets pushed to the faculty or to
P&S or to merit or just particular majors and—or just students in general,
and that’s not a decision I want you making.
Brislawn: The Associate Deans have said they would help.
East: I’m not sure that’s a decision I want the Deans making. I mean, by
themselves. But I do know that if the Deans or the Provost or anybody is
going to expect me to see them, then they need to make it clear to you that
39
you have to send it directly to me or send me a direct information about
looking at that directly.
O’Connor: Uh huh.
East: Now I might—you might say, “Ten policies are up for review.” You
don’t have to send me a message that says the 10 messages, but you need
to send me something that says, “Go look.”
Peters: Senator Strauss is up next. I’ll just note in the interest of time that
we’ve spent about 15 minutes on this, and I did start us off with this
because I know a lot of people have been getting these emails, and people
wanted to—you wanted to know what—what it was about. We can always,
you know, as we see it roll out, we can send emails
Christensen: Absolutely.
Peters: to—to Stacey [Christensen] and Jim [O’Connor] and everything.
So, in the interest of time, I just wanted to remind people that I know there
are other things people want to talk about. Senator Strauss.
Strauss: Thank you. I was going to change the subject. Mr. O’Connor, I
think our fathers are roommates?
O’Connor: They were, until last week.
Strauss: They were until today, so I don’t know if we qualify as “family” or
not. [laughter]
O’Connor: Well, extended.
Strauss: Well, then it pains me to ask you a pointed question.
O’Connor: Sure.
Strauss: And I’m going to. There was a recent AAUP Report which was
critical of the University and its—and its relationship with faculty, and then
40
there was an—a difficult, what I would characterize as a difficult letter from
Ben Allen to the public, and I find it difficult because then I’m—and I’m
quoting our—our Senate Chair, it—roughly, it portrayed the faculty as
being opposed to taxpayer, public, and student interests is—is a way that
you could interpret it. And it also portrayed the University as a victim to
the AAUP, and my question to you is, “Are you involved in advising
President Allen how to put out these communications? Do you fit in that
workflow process?”
O’Connor: Most of the time, yes.
Strauss: Then, could you explain what the thought was with that response
from Ben Allen to the public?
O’Connor: Well, I can’t speak—I can’t put words in the President’s mouth,
but I think it’s pretty obvious that in that letter he was representing the
Administration of the University, and he was taking offense at what he saw
the faculty union trying to do, not the faculty in total but the faculty union
and AAUP. And I think I can leave it at that.
Strauss: I—I—I guess I’ll follow-up with one final statement, and as—and
I’ve been here, this is my—working on my 15th year now, and—and I think
that the University relations between faculty and Administration are
probably at an all-time low, and—and those types of statements that
President Allen’s putting out don’t help, and so I would request personally
that—that some of the statements be temp—tempered a little bit, and—
and consider also that the—that the University is the faculty. We are the—
the weavers that make the fabric. And without the faculty, there is no
University. Nobody cares about dorms or—or—or cafeterias or tours
around. We are the bricks and mortar of the University, and so to be
portrayed in a negative light, whether people think it’s the Union’s fault or
not, is—is difficult. Thank you.
O’Connor: I would agree wholeheartedly.
Peters: Senator DeBerg.
41
DeBerg: I would like to follow that up. I mean, before the AAUP letter
when the program cuts were announced, I mean, the kinds of __________
stuff that came out of your office was so insulting. “Faculty hate change.”
You know, it was just—they were ad hominem attacks on the faculty. I
mean, I’ve had reports of faculty sitting in on committee meetings that had
nothing to do with what you all do wondering whether or not they could
have a no confidence vote in you and your office. I mean, well, how can
you justify characterizing the faculty the way you did? That’s my first. And
my second question is “Do you work for Ben Allen or do you work for the
University?” I mean, there seemed to me to be no differentiation in any—
any of the thinking or work that I saw coming out of your office that the
good of the University may not be the same thing as the good of Ben Allen.
So, I have those 2 issues.
O’Connor: I honestly don’t remember the quote that you quoted at the
first part of that. I don’t remember that ever coming from our office.
DeBerg: Well, it did, either in writing or in an interview.
O’Connor: And the second one I think I appreciate your statement, Betty.
We’re in a tough position because many of you know us. We’ve worked
with you for years. We spend day-in and day-out—one of the things we’re
trying to do is promote what you do, the research you do, the work you do,
because you are the University. We also work with the President and for
the President, so we’re in that tough position as well.
DeBerg: Well, I just want to personally say that I was—I don’t think there’s
any unit of the Administration outside of centr—any unit of the University
outside of Central Administration that I have been more upset and felt
more letdown by than you and UMPR.
O’Connor: I can understand, especially in your position.
DeBerg: In every single thing that you said in the last year and a half, I, you
know, have yet to see anything really redemptive out of you.
O’Connor: I understand.
42
Peters: Chair Funderburk.
Funderburk: I do understand that you’re in an awkward position on that,
because ultimately there’s a Chief Executive Officer who makes decisions.
However, I do hope that some careful advice along the way of Ben’s—I
thought Dennis Clayson, and I’m always hesitant to agree with him on
something, but he has a piece in the paper, and he made a very good point
that the wording you use clearly said—implied that the University was the
Administration. It did not say “the University Administration.” It said, “The
University is under attack,” meaning that somehow we are not a part of
that. [O’Connor and Christensen vocalizing agreement throughout this
turn at talk of Funderburk] And I think there were several other indiscreet
wordings made on a number of issues that have arisen that I think, had
your office been able to persuade the President and others, might have
been more effective messaging as well, so I hope that something can come
out of that for good, because I think some of it just made things worse than
they needed to be.
O’Connor: Uh huh.
Peters: Professor DeSoto next and then Secretary Edginton.
DeSoto: Yeah, I had a question. Jim, you know I came into your office on
October 24th and told you that the story that I had heard Stacey
Christensen quoting on the radio as I went in to work was not an accurate
representation about my course policy, talking about the student
grievance. And then it wasn’t an hour later and you had—and you were
then coming back from Ben Allen’s office where you had been talking about
a press release, and that press release still went out even after I had told
you that that was not accurate as far as it’s gone. The student’s grade was
never in jeopardy. The overall story was false. And I would like to ask you
now that you’re here if you can tell me why Ben Allen went ahead and sent
that--that horrible email that went out? And I would also like to take issue
with you trying to parse (?) the Faculty Union from the Faculty Statement
and to equate the AAUP censure with the Faculty Union. The AAUP
censure is the overall umbrella organization of the AAUP which represents
43
the professional organization of faculty. There is collective bargaining
congress (?) which is formally affiliated with the AAUP, but it’s actually
separate, and I would just like to say that, for the record, the
Administration was censured by the faculty not by the Union, and also for
the record the President of the Union at the time, and I know this firsthand
because it was me, they—she was asked—I was asked 3 or 4 times to
spearhead a vote of no confidence in President Allen. Each time I said, “No.
I wasn’t going to be involved with that.” So, it is not the Union that’s
having problems with the Administration. It’s the faculty.
Female voice [MacLin?]: I’d like to hear an answer to her first question.
DeBerg: Yeah, I want you to speak to what the President did to Professor
DeSoto.
O’Connor: I can’t.
Female voice [MacLin?]: At least in your role, that she came to you guys
and gave information.
DeBerg: Well, the press release came from your office.
O’Connor: Yes, it did. You expressed your opinion to me. The President
expressed his opinion and directed me to send out a communication to the
media.
Christensen: I was in that meeting as well. We were directed to send it.
DeSoto: It is not my opinion how my class works. It is the fact of how my
class works.
O’Connor: I’m—I’m saying you—you explained your side. Sure, you
explained your side to me, and I was—I was directed to send out the news
release.
Peters: Senator Terlip.
44
Terlip: You all have talked to us about best practices several times. If you
had that information ahead of time, I don’t believe issuing the report you
issued goes along with PRSSA’s best practices.
O’Connor: True, and I—and I would agree completely, but that’s not the
whole story, but I’m at—I’m not at liberty to share the things that went on
in that meeting because that would be breaking confidentiality.
Peters: I apologize to Secretary Edginton. I skipped him on the queue.
Edginton: That’s all right. I’d like to defer back to Professor Strauss’s
original comments and also Senator DeBerg’s comments about the process
that’s taken place. You know, it seems to me again in this notion of shared
governance had you can’t—came—come back to the Faculty Senate and
asked them for a read on this—that particular letter from AAUP that you
might have been able to temper the President’s comments coming out.
And, in fact, the responses that came back from the Union and from the
Faculty Senate seemed to be the more reasoned responses than what came
out of the President’s office. And I think by just taking that little step of
involving the faculty to get a read on the—on their sense on what’s going
on, just talking to Sen—Senate Chair Peters and the head of the—the
Faculty, Faculty Chair Funderburk, would help you in framing those
responses so we get out of this adversarial relationship. And I just would
strongly encourage you to seek their wisdom, seek their advice, because
you’re not coming out of this, you know, view—viewed in a way that is
positive for the University and—and at least in most of the people in this
room’s opinion.
O’Connor: I appreciate that, thank—I think that’s a great suggestion, and I
look forward to doing it.
Peters: Senator DeBerg.
DeBerg: Well, I have to—I’ll go further than that. I mean, I think that the
role that you all played has been disastrous. I think that the role that your
office played has increased the rancor. It—it’s just been disastrous.
45
Christensen: I would—let me comment, and I
DeBerg: The AAUP mentioned the kinds of reporting that came out of your
office in its report as highly negative report.
Christensen: I—we’ve been here about the same number of years, 13
years. I love this place. I—my graduate degree is from this place. I mean,
I—I would disagree with you, respectfully disagree with you. In the position
that I’m in in working with the media, I would argue that we are our own
worst enemy sometimes. Our own employees, our own faculty and staff
who contact the media with false stories and you feed the beast. I call it
the beast. They feed the fire. It’s—it’s not always our statements going
out. We have to then respond to a reporter who heard from some angry
faculty person. You know what? It’s not just us. I mean, it’s an ongoing,
daily issue with these hot topics that are very emotional topics for people. I
get that, but then we are forced then to have to come up and then counter.
And it makes us look like, to the public, that we have all of this infighting
going on, which some of it is true and some isn’t. But I guess I would
respectfully say that I feel that many faculty and staff have caused some of
those issues in their outward communications on social media and the
media as well.
Peters: Oh, Senator Kirmani.
Kirmani: Yeah, you know, I personally feel that there’s not much point in
blaming these people. Are you Vice-President? Vice-President O’Connor?
He reports to the President. They are part of the Administration. What can
he do, if the President tells him something? He can give his honest advice,
but after all, he—he is part of the Administration, whatever they expect
from him.
O’Connor: I would like to say that we worked very closely with a lot of you
folks over the years, and I know that this has been a very contentious time,
and we’ve listened very closely to what you’ve had to say today and in
other conversations before this, and we look forward to speaking to you
afterwards as well, and we look forward to moving forward. And please
46
give us the benefit of the doubt. Give us another chance. We appreciate
that.
Peters: Ok. Senator MacLin.
MacLin: And then I would just broaden the conversation a little bit to say
that touching base with faculty members and maybe even more broadly
with the Faculty Senate, since we represent so many different faculty
members. I understand you—you interact with faculty all the time, but
when you come to this Body or a subcommittee of this Body or talk to our
Chairs, they are—they represent so many others, and then we can provide
feedback. I’d say that visually speaking I love the marketing campaign that
I’ve been seeing around town on the billboards, but—but placement has
been strange at times and some of the photo choices have been strange for
some of the neighborhoods that the billboards are in. They are beautiful
billboards. I think that kind of advertising, any advertising is good, but I
think it could have been better, and I think that you all are busy people
doing a million things that sometimes tapping in to existing faculty
expertise to say, “Does this make sense? Is this messaging going to work in
this neighborhood? Is there anybody on the faculty that has some
knowledge about that? How do you want to see UNI represented in the
town that you live in?” I don’t live in Cedar Falls. “How do I want to see
UNI represented in Waterloo, in East Waterloo?” And I think that there’s
just a wealth of resources, and if we’re not in an adversarial position, if
Stacey [Christensen] isn’t constantly feeling like faculty are the ones that
are—that are making her job more difficult, then she and others and the
rest of you all can tap into feedback and resources that are—that are in the
faculty, because as Kim [Brislawn] mentioned earlier on another issue, we
are supposed to all be in this together, and you may have your allegiance,
ultimate allegiance to upper Administration as Syed [Kirmani] pointed out,
but we’re supposed to be here for something bigger and more common
than that.
O’Connor: I appreciate that.
Brislawn: I smile when you talk about those billboards. Those—those
billboards were—I got a lot of calls about those billboards. They were part
47
of the “Imagine the Impact” campaign, and the people selected on the—on
the billboards were actually selected by the Foundation. And so I was
given, “These are the people that are going to be on it, and we want, you
know, as much coverage as possible.” And so some of the boards were
added bonus ads, part of the negotiated as part of the buy. So, I hear what
you’re saying.
O’Connor: Believe me, we hear the same things.
Brislawn: I hear what you’re—I hear what you’re saying. Yes. But it was—
it was not a campaign. We designed the campaign, but we did not have
control over the copy or the photo selection, so
O’Connor: Or placement.
Brislawn: Good feedback, though. And I—I don’t live here. I live in Cedar
Rapids, and I commute. So I’m always asking, “What do you think of these
locations?” or, you know, I mean—so, I appreciate that. And I will be in
com—more communication.
Peters: Senator Neuhaus. Oh, sorry. Senator—sorry, Chair Funderburk
first. I almost skipped—almost skipped in my order.
Funderburk: On a practical note, if you don’t already have it on your radar
to be redoing the PowerPoint format that’s been used by the University for
quite a few years now, each of the last 4 meetings I’ve heard side
comments about how tired and dated the format is. So, I hope that that’s
coming up to be changed soon.
O’Connor: It actually is.
Funderburk: Maybe lose the “it looks like paper but it doesn’t” format.
Peters: Now Senator Neuhaus.
Neuhaus: I—I would just encourage both the [Faculty] Senate and your
office to try and meet more often. Now I know this was not a terribly
48
comfortable time. We—we hit some—hit some nerves I’m sure all around,
but I think things will get better only if we talk back and forth a bit more
often. If you guys can steel yourself to come back again
O’Connor: Sure.
Neuhaus: I think that’s—that’s good for everybody all around on that.
O’Connor: Absolutely.
Neuhaus: And we’re—we—we can be pretty tough on the Athletic
Department as well and then other folks that come in, but this is one way
to at least get things out and about. Now, people are going to have their
different perceptions on—on where things are coming from. There are
going to be things that you have to do that we initially may not fully
appreciate, but that can also go the other way as well.
O’Connor: Sure.
Neuhaus: So I—I would encourage the [Faculty] Senate in future years to—
to—to invite this office here. I would encourage you to, despite maybe
some of the lumps you got today, to—to come back again, because I do
think, you know, despite how difficult this is—this is what’s needed, is—is—
is this kind of conversation.
O’Connor: Sure.
Peters: And, if I might, I think one thing that I think we the faculty and
University Relations—and—and the President and the Provost for that
matter—need to figure out a way to work better together on is precisely
what I think it was Senator DeBerg who was talking about the—the need to
communicate the faculty’s contributions to community, to the State, to the
Legislature, to—that, I think, you know, we get—it hasn’t happened yet this
year but usually we get those terrible articles written about all the—the
quote unquote “wasteful PDA’s” that professors have gotten, right?
[several voices commenting at once] Yeah. And so we’re put in—we’re put
in this position and you end up, you know—we’re put in this position—I
49
mean, there was—the one last year was particularly bad, and—and we’re
put in this position of—of once a year it seems like trying to defend some
research project which obviously has merit to everyone around the room—
this table would—would see it and think it has merit, but it sounds funny to
people on the outside, and it gets pulled out, and it gets mocked. And
that’s the—that becomes “the faculty” to the public. But if we can—if we
can figure some way to highlight faculty contributions on a regular and
ongoing basis, we—we’re—I think faculty are very good at going out into
the community and giving talks and doing things like that. I think
community members all over sort of know this on a micro level, but I’m not
sure it gets fully appreciated on the—on—as the sum of all those
contributions and how much that contributes, and I think we need to do a
better job.
Christensen: No one wants a positive—a positive story more than myself.
So, I mean, we are looking for news. So I encourage you, if you’ve got
something good to share, send it, please.
O’Connor: And the thing to keep in mind—we just did a study over the
past month, I think, about negative/positive/neutral attitudes—you know,
stories that were run in the mid—in the media, and it was overwhelmingly
positive, but what we—and most of that was stories about what faculty are
doing quite honestly. But the positive stories are the—you don’t tend to
remember unless it was you or your colleague right next door. It’s the
negative ones that you remember, and so we try to force ourselves to go
back and look at—actually look at the numbers and look at the stories, and
on a weekly basis, there are positive stories out there. It’s just we tend to
get caught up and just remember the negative ones. But we—but please
send us every story idea you have about yourselves, your colleagues, your
students, the good things they are doing. We need to keep that pipeline
going at all times.
Peters: Senator Kirmani.
Kirmani: Yeah, I would support what Chris [Neuhaus] said earlier that the
Senate should work with the University Relations in a more effective
50
manner. University Relations can do a lot of damage as we have seen. So it
would be better if we work with them more closely.
Peters: Senator DeBerg.
DeBerg: I—I guess I have one more question. Did you all work with the
Student Government last year to turn them against the faculty? I—I—did
you help coordinate the “Support Ben Allen campaign”?
Christensen: No.
DeBerg: And the Student Government—that came with signs prepared and
sat in our Faculty Meeting when we took the vote of no confidence? And
O’Connor: I would ask them.
DeBerg: I mean, they had ready-made signs. They were out in the lobby
with a—with a packet for reporters, and you didn’t work with them on
that?
O’Connor: No, but they—they could answer that very easily.
DeBerg: Ok.
White: [KaLeigh, NISG Vice-President 2012-13] No, that was not related to
Student Government. That was a number of students who collaborated on
their own.
DeBerg: It was who?
White: It was—it was a group of students that collaborated on their own to
organize that. Student Government was not associated with the Support
for Ben Allen group that day. That was all others.
DeBerg: Well, the President and Vice-President were leaders of it. Ok?
White: I didn’t—I
51
DeBerg: Ok. Ok, thank you.
Bancroft-Smithe: [Jordan, NISG President 2012-13] They may have done it
on their own, but it was not in association with the Student Government.
White: Right.
DeBerg: I had heard that the students who brought professionally-made
signs and had—were from Athletics, that they were put together by the
Athletics Department. Do you know that?
Bancroft-Smithe: I have no idea.
White: We’d have to ask them.
O’Connor: What I—what I do know for sure is we [University Relations]
weren’t a part of that. This is the first I’ve actually heard of it. So, we—we
didn’t
Terlip: I actually asked someone, and they said your office handed them
the sign. They don’t recall that the student
O’Connor: No, I would—I would say that was a mischaracterization,
because we had been at all
DeBerg: You had nothing to do with the student presence at the All Faculty
Meeting?
O’Connor: No.
Peters: I saw a—I thought I saw [a hand up]
O’Connor: That’s not part of our role.
52
Peters: Sure. We don’t usually recognize members of the press, but Blake
Findley who is—who’s also a—just a regular student, not just a member of
the press.
Findley: This is not related to my news role. I know the students behind
that movement and, well, like where they got the posters and stuff. They
had nothing to do with Student Government or UR, like at all.
O’Connor: Thank you.
Christensen: Thank you.
DeBerg: Thank you.
Peters: Yeah. Ok. Senator Swan and then Chair Funderburk.
Swan: Ok, we’re just about out of time, and I’ve been listening throughout
this period, and I want to ask you and your office a question about accuracy
in facts. And so some of your responses said that you listened to people’s
opinions and then publish what other people tell you to publish, and you
represent the whole University according to one area over others. And
perhaps, perhaps you have to. Maybe that’s your response. The—your
employment condition is such that you cannot at—in certain times
represent all of the facts accurately. You must represent what a certain
group requires you to do, and if that’s the answer, then that—that’s what I
want. But perhaps there’s another answer that I’m not hearing. How do
you decide to proceed when you have contrary representations of fact?
O’Connor: Well, I guess that—I just say that I agree with you
wholeheartedly, but the key point there is fact—is what one person sees as
fact and another person sees as opinion et cetera. Part of our job, our role,
is to be eyes and ears and to try to make sure that decision-makers have all
the information from all perspectives possible and to make—and make the
case that they be objective and understand all the different perspectives
out there, but like you said, at the end of the day we are a part of the
Administration of the University, and there are times when we have to
represent the President.
53
Swan: His administration.
O’Connor: Yeah. But you—you described it very well.
Peters: We’ve got Chair Funderburk and then Senator DeBerg and then
Professor DeSoto.
Funderburk: Well, the thing that I was going to say initially was to just—
just state for the record that the President of the Student Body was also not
part of that group.
DeBerg: That the what?
Funderburk: That the President of the Student Body last year was also not
part of that group. I’m stating it for the record if you will. I can’t speak for
the Vice-President, but I know for a fact the President was not. But that
also the last thing you said led me to another question of that. When you
were talking about representing all the opinions or facts as you find them,
how do you ascertain what they are from the faculty if you don’t think,
meet, or speak with anyone from the faculty side of it? I understand that
ultimately you answer to the President, but if part of your job, as you
stated, was to represent it, where do you get this from without speaking to
any of us?
O’Connor: You’re assuming that we don’t, and we do. It depends on the
specific situation.
Funderburk: Well, I’ve had 2 years as the Chair of the Senate and the Chair
of the Faculty, and we’ve never had a conversation other than chatting over
coffee at the Board of Regents or something.
O’Connor: That’s a good point, but we’ve—until recently we haven’t, I
guess you’d say, been associated with the same issues. [some laughter,
gasps, a “wow”]
54
Funderburk: I find that an absurd statement based on the past year’s
discussion in the newspaper.
O’Connor: Well, looking at our day-to-day work—yeah, but I guess, you
know, at the end of the day
Christensen: We work a lot with the Provost’s Office who we would
assume is a representation. I mean
DeBerg: Wow! Well, that’s a really bad assumption.
Christensen: We—it’s not as if we’re just working with the President’s
Office.
DeBerg: She got a vote of no confidence from the faculty, you know.
O’Connor: We hear you loud and clear. I think we’ve covered as much of
this topic as we can.
Christensen: Uh huh.
Peters: _______________________________ Senator DeBerg.
DeBerg: Well, I do want to say one more thing. The press release of the
National Guard student went out without any presidential—without the
President even talking to Professor DeSoto. There was no attempt at factfinding before this went out. I—I—so that makes me think that what you
just have said is—it’s, you know, there was no attempt to get down to the
facts there. Zero.
Christensen: We’re just not at liberty to discuss the details of that meeting,
and
DeBerg: That’s fine. But we know the President didn’t talk to Professor
DeSoto. We know that you didn’t. She had to hunt you out. I mean, come
on. This idea about, you know, going out for the facts and representing the
whole University is just blatantly untrue in that situation.
55
Peters: Do you have anything to add or are we just—ok, Senator—
Professor DeSoto.
DeSoto: I—I appreciate you coming here and hearing all that said. You
know, I know, Jim [O’Connor], that you’ve—I felt that when I talked to you,
you were trying to be empathic. I do, because I’m afraid I’m not going to
get a chance to ask this later, I—I’m just sitting here trying to remember the
name of that radio—or TV station from Cedar Rapids. It’s not KC—is it
KCRG?
O’Connor: It’s KCRG and KGAN.
DeSoto: The news rep. from KCRG, which printed some false information
that they got from UNI, and then the part that I want to ask about is that
they apparently contacted Stacey Christensen about how to get in touch
with me, and Stacey Christensen said I wasn’t available. How did that
happen?
Christensen: I got the contact from Nadia Crow at KCRG who I had no idea
what the situation was because the National Guard member had gone to
her. That’s how we learned of the story.
DeSoto: This was after even hearing from the student.
Christensen: No, I never told anyone that they couldn’t get in contact with
you. A reporter is savvy and smart enough they would not, for something
like that, even come through me. They would look in the Directory.
DeSoto: The director of the—of KCRG, I have an email that said—I said,
“Why didn’t you contact me?” And he said that he’d contacted you, and
you said that I was not available. I’ve got the email.
Christensen: No, I didn’t.
O’Connor: That’s not how we handle things like that. We would—I mean,
we—we—we send them to you.
56
DeSoto: Well, I’ll send—this will be transcripted, and I’ll send that back to
them.
Christensen: Yeah, good.
O’Connor: Sure. Absolutely.
Peters: Anything else? Thank you again for coming. We do appreciate
seeing you to talk over these things with you.
Christensen: Thank you.
O’Connor: You’re welcome.
Peters: And, you know, as—as several people have said, hopefully as we—
as we move forward, we’ll be able to do this more regularly and not have,
you know—not have so much history built up that it all comes out all at
once. So, thank you again for coming, and
O’Connor: You’re welcome.
Peters: And we—we’ll all let you know about the new format for
disseminating news, too. We’ll let you know what we think about that.
O’Connor: All right.
ADJOURNMENT
Peters: Seeing no other business, I would be happy to entertain a motion
to adjourn.
Edginton: So move.
Peters: Secretary Edginton. And seconded by Senator Hakes [who
indicated]. All in favor, please say, “aye.” [ayes heard all around]
57
Opposed, “no”? [none heard] And I’ll let you know about the Feb—about
the next meeting when I know about it.
Submitted by,
Sherry Nuss
Transcriptionist
UNI Faculty Senate
Next meeting:
Date: 02/11/2013
Oak Room, Maucker Union
3:30 p.m.
58
*** This document was appended to the minutes after they were approved, pursuant to action by
Senate (1180/1176)
On Fri, Nov 9, 2012 at 9:00 AM, Adam Carros <Adam.Carros@kcrg.com> wrote:
That was Stacey Christensen with the office of University Relations.
Adam Carros
News Director - KCRG
501 Second Ave. SE
Cedar Rapids, IA 52401
(319) 368-8604
Adam.Carros@kcrg.com
From: Mary Desoto [mailto:cathy.desoto@uni.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, November 07, 2012 6:20 PM
To: Adam Carros
Subject: Re: Errors of Fact and Omission
Thanks for your note.
Who told you I was not available for comment?
-CD
On Wednesday, November 7, 2012, Adam Carros wrote:
Cathy,
We will not be issuing a public apology or correction for this story and stand by our reporting.
However, KCRG would be interested in hearing your side of this story on camera if you are ever
interested and available. We earlier attempted to contact you through the proper University
channels but were told you were not available for comment. It sounds like you feel the University
leadership threw you under the bus and we would be interested in sharing your side of that story.